Warriors Such As: Chapter 8 (Hawkquisition)

Hawkquisition Part 4: Warriors Such As
Chapter 8
Wherein Hawke’s worries are not ill-founded

It wasn’t the village leader that woke them the next morning. An elf with short brown hair and grey eyes that never quite met any of theirs brought them a breakfast of thin flat cakes wrapped around some sort of gruel and chunks of fish, at which Fenris made faces, picking fish out of the gruel in search of anything that hadn’t absorbed its flavor, and finally giving up and scraping the whole concoction onto the plate to eat the wrap alone.

The boy watched in silence as they ate, standing in the doorway and glancing from one of them to the next as if worried they would bolt for it and mow him down. When they had finished and rose to gather their things, he finally spoke up. “I’m Kynix,” he said. “I’m to take you safe through the jungle.”

Thayer glanced around at his companions. “That’s kind of you,” he said slowly, “but I think we --”

Kynix shook his head vehemently. “Please. You must come with me. At least till you are a safe distance from the village. We are grateful you closed the hole in the sky, yes, but you can’t stay here. Tevinters leave us alone mostly, but if they found you here...”

“Overstayed our welcome, is that it?” Thayer cocked his head and quirked a smile. “All right, then. We don’t wish to put you at risk. But you still needn’t come with us. We’ll just be on our way and…”

“Wander into Vint raiders?” the boy raised his chin in challenge, his voice breaking. “They took my brothers last year. Don’t even know if they made it safe through the slave markets or died at sea. You want to get through the jungle safe, you follow me.”

Metis nudged Thayer and gently confirmed, “It is actually raiding season, Inquisitor.”

Thayer fixed Kynix with a hard stare for a long moment before bursting out, “By Andraste, what sort of land is this that arranges such things in seasons? Oh, very well. Show us this route of yours.”

~*~

“I knew he was trouble,” Fenris grumbled, hours later and deep in the jungle, as they drew their weapons, standing back to back surrounded by at least a dozen Qunari while Kynix disappeared into the trees. “Fish. Pfaugh.”

“Fish, as a sign of betrayal?” Thayer laughed in surprise. “By that logic, all of Seheron’s probably out to get us.”

“Likely enough, by any logic.”

“Well, by my logic, Kynix’s little heartbreaking tale about his brothers was a scam of the first rate. Wouldn’t you say so, Varric?”

“Actually,” Metis interrupted, “it was probably true. A grudge against Tevinter would explain why he was working for the Qunari.”

“Not uncommon,” Fenris confirmed. “There are Qunari agents throughout Seheron. Anyone we meet could --”

“Right. Fine. We’ll watch out for people offering us fish in future.” He frowned and shifted a dagger, crouching at the ready as the Qunari slowly closed in, one of the larger ones raising a hand to halt the rest when they were within spearing -- or speaking -- distance. “Do you suppose,” Thayer mused, “it would help if they knew we’re not Tevinters?”

“Doubtful,” Fenris glanced at the Inquisitor, “but the attempt can be made.” He straightened, lowering his greatsword to shout across the clearing at the apparent Qunari leader. “Shanedan! Anaan esaam Qun.”

The Qunari leader looked the slightest bit surprised at hearing his language from the elf for only a moment before responding in kind. Thayer and the others shifted and exchanged glances as the parley stretched on, until finally Fenris turned to Thayer to say, “They wish to know if you are the Inquisitor.”

“Well, obviously --” Thayer gestured with his Anchor hand.

“The Inquisitor whom they blame for the loss of a dreadnought off the Storm Coast some time ago.”

Thayer frowned in thought. “Dreadnought? What the -- oh. That.” He shrugged, keeping an eye on the Qunari leader. “It was the dreadnought or the Bull’s Chargers. The Inquisition offered reparations, but the Qunari made it clear that their interest in an alliance was at an end.”

The Qunari shouted something more, at which Fenris snorted and interpreted: “It appears they have no wish to reopen negotiations at this time. They do, however, aim to take us alive.”

“Is that so?” Thayer grinned. “How heart-warming. I wonder why. Let’s not find out, shall we?” A volley of Qunari spears flew in to punctuate his words, and the Inquisition team answered with the zip of Bianca’s bolts and the crackle of lightning called down from Metis’ staff, with the flare of lyrium tattoos and the sweep of Fenris’ greatsword, with the hail of sudden cuts from Thayer’s daggers when he appeared as if from nowhere behind the warrior bearing down on Varric.

This was a dance the others knew all too well, Metis thought as he called to roots and branches to entangle, lightning to spark, fire to kindle along the Inquisitor’s daggers or in the leaves beneath a Qunari’s feet. The mage himself had often enough had cause to defend himself with his magic, as was inevitable when one had the privilege of magic in Tevinter, but seldom on the scale his companions had reached in their first few days in Seheron. Metis was finding them fine companions, but for all the Inquisitor’s optimistic charm and the dwarf’s compassionate wit, they were fatally efficient in battle. And the elf. Every time battle found them, Metis was astonished anew at the gulf between Fenris’ lyrium-imposed abilities, honed in years of such combat, and the berserker-like madness of the red-engraved warriors whom he had thus far encountered in the wastelands of Ath Velanis. This, Metis reminded himself, this is what the Venatori hope to create, as he watched Fenris, with a flare of lyrium light, stop one Qunari’s heart and eviscerate the next with gestures that from anyone else would have been merely a shove.

They played to one another’s strengths, too, these three so oddly matched: Fenris held the enemies’ attention with his violent and glowing onrush, till at some point the balance of the lyrium was tipped and the elf almost seemed to vanish from their sight, ghosting about the battlefield even as Thayer emerged from his shadows to catch them off guard when they were looking around to see where Fenris had gone. Meanwhile Varric had found cover behind a fallen tree and kept the bolts raining down in all directions, including three shots fast on each other’s heels into the chest-throat-head of a Qunari that Metis turned to see rushing up behind himself. He flashed Varric a grateful smile and reinforced his flagging barriers around them both.

And he was a scholar, not a warrior, but Maker if there wasn’t a giddy joy flooding him as yet another Qunari writhed to the ground with Metis’ thorns squeezing at his legs; as the sudden rush of his fire, kindled at another enemy advancing upon him, stole the very breath from that horned warrior’s lungs; as Fenris ghosted suddenly in behind him to take the head of a third, so bloody and determined and intense when he briefly nodded to Metis in passing that the mage felt the most illogical urge to burst out laughing.

Three days, and they had certainly improved as a team; but of course the others already were one, Metis knew, so perhaps it was just that with repetition of this dance he was seeing their efficiency more. Or that he was starting to find his own place in it. Nevertheless, this was quicker, easier than the battle that first day had been, ambushed by Qunari in their own supposedly safe camp. Though he was fairly sure there had been more Qunari ambushing them that time, and besides, they’d had a little more time to ready themselves for this one while Fenris chatted with the Qunari leader; but even so, it seemed --

“Venhedis,” he swore at the sound of a battle horn echoing through the trees. It seemed the dozen or so that Kynix had stumbled them into hadn’t been patrolling all alone. “Reinforcements incoming!” Metis shouted over the cries of battle and the roar of his own fires.

They came from the -- well, he’d lost his sense of direction in the midst of scurrying about the clearing to evade any Qunari taking too great an interest in him, not to mention that clearing was really too generous a word for a spot under the trees where one could at least see one’s enemies between one tree and the next but could still not see the sky. North, for his best guess. Hopefully not west, because they still needed to head that way. North could be given a wide berth. Except that north seemed to be nearly upon them anyway.

The last of Kynix’s Qunari friends fell just as the first of the reinforcements’ spears flew past the trees into their midst. Metis and the others ducked behind cover -- Varric’s fallen tree, many a fallen corpse -- till the volley lifted. Then they had just a moment to exchange glances, take stock -- each of them still breathing, good; nasty scratch on the dwarf’s biceps and blood seeping between Fenris’ fingers where he pressed his hand to his side, not so good; Metis shot quick tendrils of healing energy both their ways in haste -- before the enemies were within sight.

Very not so good. Metis caught his breath when he saw their numbers, easily twice the dozen that had surrounded them at first. And they had…

“Saarebas,” Fenris growled when he saw it, the giant enshrouded in the visor and chains.

“We are in such deep shit,” Varric agreed.

“Qunari mages,” Metis told Thayer, since the other two at least seemed aware of them, “are the greatest weapon they have. They know no magic but destruction. And they are very, very destructive. If that one can control the battlefield, we could be undone in seconds. They are hardly more than killing machines.”

Thayer nodded. “Of course,” he smirked over his shoulder at the others, “arguably, so are we. All right then, the saarebas is our first target. I’m going in close; Fenris, keep the rest off me. Metis, Varric -- oh, to the Void with it, you all know your jobs.” He nodded again and darted into the shadows of the trees even as Metis lit barriers around the four of them and Fenris charged into the thick of things, his tattoos flaring to life again.

And then it was chaos, in comparison to which the first round of this battle had been a leisurely and routine thing, allowing Metis time for reflection, which, in hindsight, was a remarkable luxury. Every thought now was for a root to tangle there and fire to singe the enemy rearing up behind him here and ducking that blow only to bring his staff around and parry this one…

It was brutal and it was fast and there was no pause. He was too old for this and he had never felt so alive but Maker, it would be nice to catch his breath at some point. The barrier flickered and he went to cast it again but first there was a sword much closer than it should be and he was bleeding suddenly even as he twisted away, even as the roots squeezed at his foe and the fire sprang up all along them. And then he was on fire, somehow, his own? the saarebas? he could not even tell, but he rolled into the leaves and the damp of the jungle floor to put the flames out and still he had not found a second to spare in casting the barrier up again. Groaning, crouching in the leaves, pulling himself up again so he could spin his staff, weave the next spell (a barrier? a blast of fire scattering the three bearing down on him now? Oh, to cast both at once…) when there was a light, bright in his eyes -- behind his eyes? -- not ruddy as fire, no, nor blue of lyrium, only -- white and --

Cut off suddenly, from chaos to quiet, knowing no more.

When he woke again, disoriented and confused and frankly a little surprised to wake at all, there were a great many people moving around.

None of them seemed to be Qunari. At least not the horned-giants kind.

Metis groaned and tried to roll to his side. A throaty chuckle made his ears perk up. The wrong side though -- he rolled over again, the other way now, and found Varric sitting beside him, oiling that contraption he called a crossbow.

“So, Professor. You’re still with us,” the dwarf greeted him.

“It would seem so,” Metis allowed, wincing at the pain in his head when he tried to sit up. He took it as a sign that he wasn’t meant to try so soon, and lay back down, turning his head to keep an eye on his companion. “And...the others? Everyone all right?”

Varric nodded. “You got the worst of it, I think. Saw that Qunari mage fling a rock at you that knocked you out cold, just before Thayer got in behind him and slit his throat.”

Metis winced. “Er...how did he…?”

“Past the fancy cage they wear?” Varric asked. Metis nodded faintly. “Oh, his worshipfulness has his ways. Don’t expect me to go spilling his secrets; I’ve still got a book on the Inquisitor Trevelyan Story planned and secrets sell books, you know.”

Metis blinked in acknowledgement and laid his head back again. “Was anyone else hurt?” he finally asked.

“Nothing serious, other than that bump on your head. Oh, and the stitches in your arm. Sorry we didn’t just heal that with magic; our healer was unavailable.”

Barely sparing a smile for Varric’s teasing, Metis found the alleged stitches, more neatly done than he was expecting, and carefully prodded at the wound with healing magic. “You took a cut to the arm yourself, as I recall.”

“Also stitched. Don’t worry; it’ll make a decent scar.”

“And Fenris? A side wound…”

“Bandaged; he’ll live. He’s always been quick to heal. Brooding enhances his immune system, I guess. Or it’s the lyrium.”

“Doubtless.” Metis glanced around. “I don’t seem to recall,” he mused, “quite so many people traveling with us.”

“Forward scouts,” Varric chuckled, gesturing around at the soldiers in Inquisition armor who, it became clear when Metis managed to focus on them longer than a second, were at work setting up a camp. “Harding’s had groups following us to establish perimeter camps after we blaze the trail. Makes getting back to the main camp a little easier later on. Plus, they brought ravens. Thayer and Fenris are over there now,” he waved in a direction Metis couldn’t really look at the moment anyway, “catching up on all the news their ladies have been sending from Skyhold, I assume. Or maybe something more official from Charter.”

“So we’re safe for now,” Metis sighed. “The rest of the Qunari?”

“Let’s just say Harding’s scouts have damned good timing. That war horn that signaled the Qunari reinforcements? Apparently our reinforcements came running too.”

“None too happy with us,” commented Fenris, striding up from Metis’ other side, marginally slower than the mage was used to seeing him, bandages just visible between the latches of his tunic, “for being so far off the course Harding had plotted for us.”

“Hey now, Thayer explained about the rift.”

“And the...fishy Qunari spy?” Metis managed a grin.

“Of course!” Varric laughed.

“Nevertheless,” said Fenris, lips thinned with a suppressed smile, “they had been trying to locate us all this day. Perhaps without the battle we would have gone on missing each other in this jungle.”

“I for one would have been fine with also missing the Qunari,” Varric shrugged.

“It is done,” Fenris waved a hand, consigning to a footnote in history what had arguably been the most exhilarating and doubly most tiring day of Metis’ life. Then he raised the other hand, bearing a crumpled parchment. “Besides, Hawke wrote. The scouts brought ravens. They’ve got messages flying back and forth now between us and the main camp.” He smirked. “She’d accumulated quite a backlog while we were away from camp. I’m not sure there aren’t ravens still on their way to us.”

“All’s well?” Varric asked, all trace of jest evaporating.

Fenris nodded. “Safe and sound. Metis?” He held out the letter. “Something she wrote in the last letter. I thought...you should know about this.”

Metis nodded, carefully pulling himself up to a sitting position and blinking against the fireworks going off behind his eyes till he could focus on Hawke’s neat and narrow script. Adjusting his spectacles, he felt the ghost of a smile form at Hawke’s endearments, her entreaties to Fenris to write, her worries at why he couldn’t...and then he read what she had written of Dagna, Merrill, mirrors, and red lyrium corruption.

“Emmen?” he asked finally as he looked up from the end of the letter.

“A boy in Merrill’s...er, clan,” Fenris said.

“The one who got infected with red lyrium?” Varric remembered.

“Planted with it,” Fenris frowned. “We fought red templars who threatened the refugees Merrill had gathered,” he explained to Metis. “Emmen had located red lyrium growing in a cave nearby. They followed him to the source and then somehow planted it in him. When we found him he was nearly unconscious, with bits of it growing out if him, twining along his limbs like…” Involuntarily his eyes fell on his own tattoos. “Well, Thayer brought him back to Skyhold. The mages there managed to stop its growth but could not wholly separate him from the infection. Dagna…” His face twisted at the attempt to explain Dagna.

“She’s from Orzammar,” Varric assisted. “Studied magic at some of the Circles before war broke out. Of course she can’t do magic, but you’d hardly know the difference between what a mage does and what she can make. Enchantments, runes...she studied red lyrium while we were fighting Corypheus, so the Inquisitor put her in charge of curing the kid. Or at least studying him.”

“And Merrill?” Metis asked, rereading the letter.

“A blood mage,” Fenris said curtly and crossed his arms.

“Soon to be his sister-in-law blood mage, if the rumors are true,” Varric teased in wheedling tones. At Fenris’ glare, he shrugged. “What? Daisy’s as nice a person as can be, elf. Sometimes I think that’s why you don’t like her, as much as the blood magic.”

Fenris huffed, but finally unfolded his arms and admitted, “She is...not as reckless as she once was. Nor, I suppose, as annoying.”

“Aw, she’s grown on you.”

“She is kind to Malcolm,” Fenris shrugged. “But she is, or at least was once, a blood mage, Metis. She bargained with a demon to learn a way to cleanse a shattered eluvian of the Blight that had corrupted it.”

With each word, Metis’ eyes grew rounder. “You’re saying she actually succeeded? In cleansing something of the Blight?”

“So it seemed.” Fenris nodded at the letter as Metis reread it once more. “Hawke -- Dagna seems to think it significant. What Merrill did.”

Varric coughed. “The Blight. It’s...I’ve got a...friend, who’s done some research in the thaig where we found that red lyrium idol, all those years ago. Recent conclusions? It’s the Blight. Red lyrium is lyrium that’s got the Blight.”

Metis frowned thoughtfully, tracing an absent-minded pattern over the edge of the parchment with his thumb. “It’s fairly new in Tevinter, you know. Red lyrium. I understand the Inquisition did much to keep it from spreading this far north, but I suppose it couldn’t be delayed forever. But a colleague and I, at the Circle of Minrathous, had a chance to run tests on a sample of it. Our conclusions...were tending to the same end as yours.”

“Any chance of bringing this colleague of yours in to help?” Varric ran a thumb over his chin, eyes narrowing.

Metis laughed, a huff of irony. “Possibly, but news is scarce out of Weisshaupt these days.”

“Weisshaupt?” Fenris looked up.

“My friend became a magister. He ran afoul of certain rivals, and being, as he was, one of the few magisters in Tevinter not to embrace blood magic, he ran very afoul of them. In the end, to keep his life he had to yield it up to a Grey Warden recruiter. Ironic, isn’t it? After all our research into red lyrium and the Blight, Caius is now better acquainted with it than anyone outside the Order can be. Last I heard of him he was at Weisshaupt. But word can be sent.” Metis shrugged. “Every resource is precious, is it not? What I know, what Mae knows, what Caius knows, what your Merrill and Dagna know.” He shook his head, then smiled and shook the letter at Fenris. “As for you, oh Wolf, have you written back to this Hawke of yours yet?”

“I was about to,” Fenris admitted, slow smile spreading.

“On with you then,” Metis admonished. “The lady has worried enough. Send her my regards, hm?”

“Write to her yourself,” Fenris countered, eyes rolling to the branches overhead as he walked away. “Maybe she’ll take your word for it, as healer, that I am not in fact dead.”

~*~

Hawke,

Yes, we are well. You can tell Malcolm, if you are still spinning this story for him, that we have twice fought Qunari and once demons (there was a rift, even here) and we are still alive.

I will leave it to Varric, or your own most excellent imagination, to fill in the details. I trust either will make it sufficiently exciting for Malcolm and for his [alleged aunt] Merrill.

I hope all is going well with Merrill’s and Dagna’s work on Emmen. The mage here confirms that red lyrium is connected to the Blight, so perhaps Merrill really can be of use. I wish her luck (you may even tell her so) but I truly hope blood magic will not be required in the process (absolutely tell her I said so)!

Tell me, Hawke, when we were at Weisshaupt, do you recall a Warden called Caius? He is a mage, a friend of Metis’ who last he heard was at that fortress. Together they studied red lyrium and the Blight, before Caius became a Warden -- which cannot have been so long ago, so I do not think this Warden would have followed the Calling yet, but I cannot recall anyone by that name at Weisshaupt when we were there. You surely made more people’s acquaintance than I, however. Metis will try to contact him, but if you recognize the name perhaps you could write to him as well, for whatever advice he can give in the matter of Emmen. Anything but blood magic, which Metis says his friend never practiced.

Metis sends you his regards, by the way. I wonder what you would make of him. There are worse mages we could be obliged to work with, no doubt. He seems honorable enough, and if he is damned inquisitive, at least it is with cause and not mere curiosity. Still, I would be happier not to be the subject of anyone’s research. I suppose Emmen may feel the same way, if he is conscious enough to think on it at this point. Metis is certainly capable in a fight -- Merrill would no doubt be intrigued by what he can do with roots and branches, and he’s a decent healer -- but I do miss the heady chill of you freezing everything in sight, and the scattering of light when my blows shatter your ice statues. And your far superior healing (I hesitate to mention it, lest you worry, but I did take some blows in this last fight; think nothing of it, Hawke, you know I heal fast, and really it troubles me very little already). Also your laugh. And your eyes. The way you narrow them when you do not believe what you are hearing, as I know you are narrowing them now when I assure you my wound is nothing like that other one, the one you left Merrill to tend.

I’m sorry. I was not going to write of that. You already have those letters.

Maker’s truth, Hawke, I just miss you. Everything. Seheron is a a death trap riddled with hostile Qunari and Tevinter raiders and treacherous fish-bearing natives and worst of all, there is no trace of you here. Not even a hawk in the sky or a violet amidst the tree roots to remind me of you.

In retrospect, though, I hardly need reminding, do I?

Be well, my love, my Hawke, ever on my mind,
Fenris